How Men And Women Experience Anxiety In Different Ways

Each and every person experiences anxiety in different ways. Everyone has a different way of feeling, expressing, and reacting to symptoms of anxiety.

There are many factors that contribute to the way a person feels, copes with, expresses, and recognizes his or her anxiety. There are also individual patterns of how a person is predisposed to be able to cope with issues related to anxiety. One factor that may contribute to the way a person feels and copes with anxiety is his or her gender.

Differences Between Men’s Anxiety And Women’s Anxiety

It is a complicated question to ask whether men and women are affected by and react to anxiety differently.

There has been research performed to determine whether men and women have different stress reactions. In the research that was conducted, samples of people who do not suffer from a pre-existing mental health or anxiety disorder were assessed to observe how they react to stress.

The results did find general differences between the stress reaction and experience of anxiety between men and women.

The following are findings based on the results of the clinical studies:

Women tend to be more easily desensitized to fear and stress than men. This means women are able to cope with a stressful or scary situation faster and more easily than men.

Women tend to express their feelings of stress and anxiety more openly than men.

Women tend to have more intense physiological reactions to stress than men. Such physiological reactions include headaches, stomachaches, fatigue, shaking, and stuttering.

Men tend to try to avoid, ignore, or escape a stressful or upsetting situation than women.

Men tend to bottle up their feelings of anxiety more than women. This causes men to act out in anger or frustration, rather than expressing anxiety, stress or fear.

Male hormones tend to maintain emotional and mental homeostasis better than female hormones. This makes women are more prone to anxious feelings than men.

Other Factors That Factor In

Keep in mind that these results are general trends within the population that do not account for other factors.

Factors that would affect a person’s ability to cope with anxiety include:

Genes

Genetics do play a role in a person’s ability to handle stress. Some anxiety disorders and anxiety-related issues do have a genetic component that can be passed through generations.

Pre-existing Mental Health Disorder

Those who suffer from mental health disorders are more prone to suffer from anxiety. This is especially true for those who suffer from anxiety disorders, mood disorders, and posttraumatic stress disorder.

Upbringing

The way a person is raised contributes to a person’s ability to cope with anxiety. For example, a person who was brought up in a chaotic household or a household with strict rules may have a higher sensitivity to anxiety.

Financial and Socioeconomic Status

People with different socioeconomic statuses tend to be triggered by and cope differently with different stressors. People in lower socioeconomic status tend to experience financial stress more than others, but also tend to be more resilient to anxiety than those in higher socioeconomic statuses.

For more information on anxiety disorders and treatment methods, visit helpingminds.com